Forum Discussion
What causes an excel file to 'Show Print Preview' rather than show the preview by default.
I am curious what causes this to happen, I have already set the print area etc., but for some reason I don't get an immediate preview when going to print, I have to click this button inside the print preview. (I have also attached the full screenshot
Doesn't seem to matter what settings I change so far, just curious what exactly causes this change in excel, I have many other documents that just bring up the preview straight away when going to print, but at the moment, this one particular file I have to click another button.
I have a MS flow that converts excel files to pdf automatically after a review process, but it keeps failing on this one file and I can't figure out why, but I think the key revolves around this, so I really want to find out what causes excel to present an additional button that you have to click to generate a preview rather than showing the preview off the bat like it does with every other file which works fine in the flow.
Thankyou
I've figured out what was causing it.
I did play around with clearing cell formatting and using inquire etc aswell, as to your suggestion. The document was only about 7 pages to start, but after that I decided to start coping elements over to another blank excel file until it would reproduce the 'Show Print Preview' issue on that file, and I found what was causing it.
I suspect that the person who made this document, converted their table from another format, as all the cell lines, even though they adhered to formatting, also had shape lines drawn on them, they were hiding across the whole doument, but I didn't see them until I started copying it over to the other document.
I had to Press F5 - > select Special, - > Objects, - > OK and press delete to clear the whole document of these shapesThis meant the show print preview button cleared and the preview went back to normal, and now the document runs through the flow correctly!
I suspect that the excel render engine gets overloaded perhaps with too many shapes, and the conversion tool might rely on the that part to be working to convert the document to PDF, but at least we found the solution, which means the Power Automate OneDrive convert file does not keep failing with error 429 "Alert: Your operation has been throttled." from it retrying to convert the file so many times that it gets shut down.
Thanks for your help
6 Replies
I have found one thing which causes it. If you set the print area to a number of columns without lower row bounds you see the button. Clear the print area and the preview appears without the button.
Possible solution is here, please read entire thread Whenever I print preview, it not only shows the small extra button to - Microsoft Community
I did come across that initially, however as described by that post, it was the fact that they had to scroll down to see the preview button, not that it was there, i.e they had too many quick access files on the left pane extending the scroll list somehow, their solution appears to have been not having to scroll down to click it anymore after reducing the list. Although I did play around with that just to see.
Regardless of my session layout this file has something to it, causing the additional preview button that happens when anyone opens the file and tries to print.
What I am curious about is why it's even asking that in the first place and what causes it relative to any other file, as if I can reverse it, maybe I can find what's causing a convert file automation to fail with only this file.My guess - Show Print Preview icon appears if we have 2084 or more pages to print. Perhaps depends on layout, but in any case around 2000 pages.
If in such workbook we delete extra data decreasing number of pages to print, let say to one page, above icon still appears. Perhaps info is kept in some cache, not sure. However, if to clear ranges with deleted data (Home -> Clear on selected range; or Inquire -> Clean Excess Cell Formatting) the icon is not shown on Print Preview.
At least that's what I was able to reproduce.
That is a new one to me, never seen it before! (sorry, no help, I know)
